The second year of Newton’s summertime ban on gas powered leaf blowers ends this Labor Day weekend. How, if at all, has the ban impacted you?
How do you think the leaf blower ban has worked out?
by Greg Reibman | Aug 31, 2018 | Newton | 21 comments
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To be honest, it has been a bit quieter, but I’ve been disappointed by how many gas powered blowers I’ve seen. About 50% or more have been gas powered. I’m not keen on calling the police and complaining every time, and most of the time I’m driving when I notice. But I think the city really needs to step up enforcement to make it work.
Otherwise, I’m on board for increasing fines and using that for an enforcement officer. I don’t really like selective enforcement of the law. And this was a good compromise in my view.
Again, this isn’t my issue, but I do appreciate the quiet in the summer months when I’m outside more.
Would love to see the city publish annual stats on how police resources are used to answer complaints… if its too much, the ban needs to lifted or stiffer penalties for repeat offenders
Police should be focusing on serious crimes
Personally my summers have improved. We live next to a two-family home with no yard, just a tree coming out of the driveway. My living room window is about 3-4 feet from their driveway. The landlord has a landscaping company come weekly to clean the leaves and they send over a TEAM of landscapers with leaf blowers and they blow leaves around for about 40 minutes. It is such an egregious misuse of leaf blowers. However this summer they started actually abiding by the law so our densely packed block gets a reprieve from the sound.
Laws are laws Bugek. If folks aren’t following the law, increase the fines and high an enforcement officer. One officer working part time would solve the problem immediately, assuming the fines were high enough. Once enforcement starts, folks change quickly.
But lifting the ban sets a horrible example. If you want to lift the ban, go back before the council and vote to change the law.
When I think back on how much anxiety, hard feelings and finger pointing there was about leaf blowers, I can’t help but think about the anxiety, hard feelings and finger pointing there is now about marijuana.
The same thing was true about Chestnut Hill Square and all the predictions that the opening of Wegmans would forever turn that stretch of Route 9 into a parking lot? Or remember the doomsday predictions about the Route 9 lane change and new traffic light at Route 128 would prevent people from getting onto Route 9 from Chestnut Street? Or even how the loss of the Austin Street parking lot during construction would kill Newtonville?
I’m as guilty of this as anybody sometimes.
But maybe there’s a lesson here.
Some times our worst fears bring out the worst in us. Then a few years later we look back and see that predictions of Armageddon fail to materialize.
I’m sure the rate of breathing disorders have plummeted in Newton. Thank goodness for all those experts on the health effects of blower-derived particulate matter. I hope they get the ribbon they all deserve for the lives, if not saved, then greatly improved.
Bans are heavy-handed impositions of the will of a generally small group on the majority. Blowers are a good case in point. The MJ ban should it pass will be another. That Newton is so ban-happy says quite a bit about the true nature of modern liberalism.
Greg,
Oh i see, this post was just an attempt at comparing opt-out with leaf blowers. ;)
Anyway, the city should be transparent about how much city resouces are used to police this vs. The revenue from fines.
Eg if we’re using 100 hours of police time but only collecting 5000 dollars then its a pretty egregious waste of tax dollars… increase the fine until it meets parity
Most of the companies I see around Newton are using gas powered blowers. Maybe some of them are using quieter ones? Seems to me like enforcement is a problem, which if I remember from the start was predicted to be the biggest problem.
The ban has greatly improved my summer. The leafblower crews now just use 1 leaf blower and are out there for a much shorter time. I no longer see them leaf blowing the sidewalks and driveways every week all summer long.
It’s greatly improved my quality of life, both because it’s been noticeably quieter in my neighborhood (I work from home a lot) and because I can go for a walk without worrying if I’ll be able to breath! I’ve especially appreciated it this summer when we’ve had a lot of hot humid days with moderately bad air quality indexes, so the added dust from leaf blowers would have made things much worse.
From talking with some officers since the ban was imposed last year there have been over 600 calls to the police with regards to leaf blowers. Of those maybe ten have involved a fine and they are not sure if any of those fines have been paid. We are talking about hundreds of hours of police Officer / dispatcher resources being tied up due to leaf blowers when they could be doing something else.
What ban?
My summer was pretty crappy anyway, with chemo, but at least it was much quieter in my neck of the woods.
I don’t believe it’s actually enforcement when no fines are levied or even followed up. It’s the law now and even though a lot of people seem to think they are above the law, the law must be enforced. If higher fines and actual enforcement are needed to get people to follow the law, so be it.
No gas blowers means exactly that!
Greg, I have always said that fear leads to a passionate outcry that all sorts of things will happen but never come to pass. Life just goes on anyway. The things we get so worked up over, even little things like a paint color, just become part of life after a few days. The only constant I’ve found in this world is change. Like it or not, things change.
Leaf blowers were never an issue for me but now I am being charged more due need to for landscaper to buy new equipment and he is refusing to remove leaves from the street in front of my house, takes too much time.
In case you didn’t notice route nine is a parking lot almost continuously. Those who live on Jackson St and vicinity cannot break into the lines of traffic on Parker St ramp and at Langley Road due to traffic lights. The left turn onto route nine from Langley Rd has created a dangerous situation, cars turn from inner Langley Rd lane and cut across the cars taking a wide turn onto furthest route nine lane. ( two Langley Rd lanes lead into three route nine lanes but cars cannot get into the appropriate lanes on
Langley so they can get to right most route nine lane)
So development on route nine has caused difficulties.
+1 on the leaf blower ban. @fig, while enforcement is key, it may not be as simple as we’d like it to be. At least with traffic enforcement, ticket proceeds go into the general fund, so you can understand why there isn’t a huge incentive for the NPD to dedicate more staff, at least not without a corresponding increase to the budget.
I generally agree with the sentiment of Greg’s post, but can’t help but comment:
Greg, you probably don’t drive on route 9 much. This one was justified. Build it and they will come. It wasn’t Wegmans itself, but the misguided MassWorks plan to add roadway capacity that has turned the Woodward Street light into a 1.5 mile queue for a significant part of the day. It may have created enough of illusion to create business opportunities in Chestnut Hill, but the traffic on Route 9 is choking the entire region.
“Leaf blowers were never an issue for me but now I am being charged more due need to for landscaper to buy new equipment. ” Talk about a first world problem! If you can afford a landscaper then you’re in pretty good shape. All we can afford is a mediocre rake that we use ourselves.
There’s an important distinction to be made. It’s not a “ban,” it’s a fairly modest restriction on use. Not much different than a restriction on the time of day a leaf blower can be used. I supported the leaf blower ordinance because I thought it was a reasonable restriction, and those gasoline powered blowers are extremely annoying. I do not however support the City Council having the right to totally ban any consumer products that are regulated at a higher level.
What ‘higher level’ are leaf blowers regulated at?
This summer was so much quieter: I rarely heard gas leaf blowers from two blocks away. When I did and politely reminded the landscapers their blower was illegal, I got shrugs and they continued blowing. When I called the police, sometimes I got a recording “I am out of the office etc…” or when I reached someone, the landscaper was long gone by the time the police showed up.
Last week, I was working outside and I called the police as soon as the landscaper got there. He knows I object (and so does my neighbor whose yard they maintain). After 35 minutes, the police came and before the policeman got back in his car, he came over and said he gave the landscapers a warning and talked to their boss. He said that next time I called and he was the officer responding, he would know the landscapers had been given a warning. I asked if another officer would know about the warning and he said he would write a report.
It does not look like anyone is reading those reports!! Why did he not know that I had called previously, at least twice? If the police does not enforce the law, what’s the point??
Summer use was never the primary issue. The landscapers are being more careful, but they are using illegal gas blowers, with a few welcome exceptions. From what I have seen, compliance with the new law is near zero.
When the leaves come down, we will see, smell and hear widespread flouting of the law. At that point, we’ll find out whether Newton has the guts to enforce the law that was passed after so much effort. I am hopeful, but not optimistic. I never thought this was a process that would take a year or two. The demise of the gas leaf blower is something that will happen, but over a long time. The technological solution exists. I happened to talk recently to a landscaper who only uses electric blowers, and he’s doing quite well financially. His prices are competitive. Others can do the same.
If the city can work up the courage to enforce its laws, eventually the landscapers will see that the course of least resistance is battery powered blowers, and we’ll all benefit. It can be done. We pretty much got rid of smoking and greatly reduced plastic bag pollution. Our streets are almost free of dog waste. Not only did the world not end as threatened, it even got a little better. It can get better still.
We citizens have an important role to play. First, we can insist that the landscapers we hire not use gas powered leaf blowers. If it costs a little more (and it should not be very much, or you are being ripped off), pay it. It’s the cost of being a good neighbor and a steward of the environment (which we all are, whether we know it or not). And when we see or hear violations of the law, call the police. Nobody likes to do that, but it’s the only way to convince the violators that we really do have a law on the books.
Wherever there is a leaf blower ban, that’s a victory for all of us.
Atlanta, GA is currently the leaf blower capital of the world. Apparently, everyone here wants to live with a sterile, toxic, golf course lawn surrounding their McMansion.
No price is too great.
If the price is kids with asthma… that’s ok.
If the price is constant noise…fine.
If the price is carcinogenic fumes … good with that.
Just as long as there is not a twig or leaf on their precious lawns.
If you don’t like your ban, move here to Atlanta and enjoy our non-stop, 365 leaf blowers.